Blahg

Ever since I got married, the amount of cooking and baking I do has increased, naturally. I quite enjoy looking up recipes, borrowing some from friends (especially my mom and sisters!), and seeing what I can come up with.

Here, I’m going to insert some background. I bought some Oreos. They were supposed to be saved for “Dirt and Worms” treats for our Halloween party this week, but Tom asked for one at a weak moment, so I said “ok” and had one myself. Then, the next day, I had two more while he was at work. Then he helped himself to one or two. Then we had some with some milk. Before you know it, they’re about half gone. Before Tom went to work three days before our party, we decided “we can buy more Oreos,” and I packed him several for lunch and sent him on his way. I was determined to save him half of what was left for about half an hour. Stupid Oreos. As always, it didn’t take long for the guilt to set in. “What a terrible wife I am! My husband is going to come home to no Oreos!” Then I slapped my hand to my forehead: “Duh! I can make cookies!”

Nope.
No eggs, no butter, no cookies. I’d pulled it off without one of those ingredients, but I couldn’t do it without either. Or so I thought! I googled “cookies without butter or eggs” and the first link that came up asked “No butter?” I answered “Well, no…” “No eggs?” “No!” “You can still make cookies!” “Squeal!”

As I read the recipe, my heart sunk lower and lower. Attention all recipe posters: People who don’t have butter or eggs probably don’t have coconut oil…let alone know it exists. There were several other ingredients I didn’t have. Whole wheat flour, raw sugar, baking powder, heck, I didn’t even have chocolate chips.

Just as I was about to give up, I thought, “I just bought baking cocoa. I could make chocolate cookies without chocolate chips…and maybe canola oil will do just fine instead of the coconut stuff. Baking soda doubles for baking powder, right? And I’m not against using white sugar instead of raw or white flour instead of wheat. Well then, why not?”

So I got to work. I came up with a cookie dough-like substance that didn’t taste half bad, so I rolled it into balls, rolled those in some sugar, then threw them in 350 degrees for 10 minutes. They came out looking splendid.

I was pretty excited and almost positive I’d just conquered my butterless eggless situation. I took a cookie off the sheet, tossed it around a bit to cool it off, then took a bite.

Wow.

This tastes like…like…like cardboard with a hint of chocolate.

I wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet, though. “Maybe if I smear some peanut butter on it, it will taste like a Reese’s peanut butter cup. “

Nice try. Now, I’m stuck with 11 cookies that look waaaay better than they taste, along with dough to make a dozen more and I’m at a loss. I don’t even have milk to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Grocery shopping tomorrow!